You can pretty much thank Larry Fink for Maroon 5.
In an interview with Bloomberg’s Erik Schatzker, BlackRock’s chairman and CEO touched briefly on his interest in music, as well as his interest in helping others jump start their careers.
Fink said that back in 2000 he met a man by the name of James Diener, then a senior executive at Columbia Records, who showed Fink a business plan for an independent record label.
“It reminded me of BlackRock – young, talented people who wanted to start their own thing,” he told Bloomberg.
Fink continued:
"I was intrigued and enthusiastic enough about this person and his business model that we raised money. I was the lead investor in Octone Records. The first artist we signed was a band called Kara's Flowers. We worked with them and changed their name to Maroon 5. We were the label Maroon 5 used for, I think, their first five albums. We made a lot of money on that record company-in a depression!"
And there you have it.
Check out the full Bloomberg interview with Larry Fink here.